It was second grade and you, Mrs. Roberts maker of minds mender of knees were beautiful to me in ways I didn’t yet understand. In some ways I still don’t and that, too is beautiful. The purple iris grew around our cistern, by the sleepy mimosa and the grape arbor. Between the rusty sheds and … Continue reading An Iris and Mrs. Roberts – Claude Kelley Kirk I’m kept here where I’m kept. To dream of lost things, little trinkets of you In this bleak of distance, empty wilds of the soul where you still live, and move through me, like you moved through rooms where love was once sown in little pots on the sill and grew, under many-fingered oak leaves … I was just a boy, back then and my memory is ― well, it’s mortal. And that, is okay. The soul is sound and some remembrance settles in, and sustains the soul. The winter skies above slate, still I was alone and that, was okay. Some things were better when the ‘others’ weren’t around. This, … My life led to a trail and the trail led to a ship then the ship went asail and my life became a trip. The trip led to a port and the port led to a house, a house of just the sort full of secrets born of doubts. So my life became a secret … A poem is a prophet and a mirror of the self, an all-seeing oracle made of heavens both, and hells. It lies with killing kindness to ragged, ravaged hearts and cracks the whip of truth in sacred, scarred savages of jagged, jaded art. A college-ruled confessional of charities and sins enumerated and collated of beginnings … In the headlighted pitch summerdark, flitting wingless moth-priests of disaffection we were on broken shoulders of a broken town. Dropped out and out of tune, wearing halogen halos and waving red-tipped Marlboro censers, drinking from bootlegger baptismals Spirit of St. Louis pop-top pisswater. Proud to be American, and breathing the last corn-tasseled air because there’s … An Iris and Mrs. Roberts – Claude Kelley Kirk
Bluebitter – Claude Kelley Kirk
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Summerdark – Claude Kelley Kirk
Justice Arts Coalition
A national network and resource for those creating art in and around the criminal legal system.
